


Another Barsoomian Night

by Sunchales



Category: BURROUGHS Edgar Rice - Works
Genre: Captivity, Damsels in Distress, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/pseuds/Sunchales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dejah Thoris and Thuvia seem helpless in their temple prison, but they can still help each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Barsoomian Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> The first five novels in the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, on which this work is based, are in the public domain. No references to later installments in the series are included in the story proper.
> 
> To Merfilly: this piece mainly consists of dialogue, which I hope you find acceptable. Your prompts all intrigued me, but I ultimately decided to go with the first one you listed. The idea just lent itself very well to character interaction. Also, I'm sorry that this fic is as short as it is.

Dejah Thoris knelt on the stone floor of her prison, grimaced, and immediately sat down. Under other circumstance, she would have crossed her legs over each other and rested each hand on a knee, as she found that the meditative position, as it would have been deemed on Earth, calmed her nerves and allowed her to focus whenever she was forced into the degradation of a dungeon, but the iron bands around her wrists and ankles prevented her from doing much with her limbs.  


Fortunately, the presence of the girl who had begun to accompany her only a comparatively short while ago made the Princess of Helium somewhat more relaxed than she would have been otherwise. When they met in the hold of a Martian flyer, the young woman had introduced herself as Thuvia, Princess of Ptarth, and the two red women eyed each other with that first light of friendship that only great distress and the threat of peril can ignite. Had Sola rounded out the company of prisoners, as she did in the hold of the Martian flyer, Dejah would have felt as well attended as she would be at home in her palace, but she and Thuvia were trapped with the cruel Phaidor.  


Phaidor herself struggled in bonds of her own at one end of the prison cell. She sat too far away from the other prisoners for Dejah Thoris to discern her facial expression, but the Princess of Helium felt certain that Phaidor glared at her with a glint savoring of all the wickedness on Barsoom in her eyes.  


“Had I access to the full use of my knife, Dejah Thoris, you and your cohort would surely be slain, and your prince would have no choice but to be mine,” she spat.  


Thuvia it was who laughed at Phaidor's assertion.  


“I think not, Phaidor, for if Dejah Thoris were dead, John Carter would spend many a year in mournful solitude and then perhaps return to Earth to resume whatever life he led before he leapt across the broad gulf between his planet and ours. No force on either worldnot even in the galaxy, or even the universe--would make him relinquish his true love for another.”  


Thuvia’s words summoned a memory to Dejah Thoris’s mind. She recalled how, on the night John Carter rescued her from the Prince of Zodanga, he confessed to her that his heart had always beaten for thrill of the clash of swords, the roar of the cannon (a war weapon indigenous to Earth, according to him), and the spray of blood. As they lay down together on the soft, pliant couch in her bedchamber, he whispered that courtship, unlike swashbuckling, did not come naturally to him, and he had wondered secretly if that made him abnormal…until he met her.  
Tears sprang from her eyes. Though she tried to stifle her sobs, Thuvia evidently overheard her, for her next words were “I feel the heaviness in your heart, Princess, and I share the pain myself. Captivity, it seems, is a new experience for neither of us, but I believe you have more reason to grieve than I.”  


“I duly appreciate your words of comfort, dear Thuvia, but I cannot countenance the thought that my spirit has the right to be more withered than yours, for you have a life of your own that awaits you and calls for you outside these dungeon walls, just as I do.”  


The girl hesitated before speaking again. “Indeed, I had a life before I was sentenced to the Temple of the Sun, and it was scarcely better. I dare call it worse, for at least here I have no one worse than Phaidor to contend with, and you are with me.”  


Wondering why the white girl had not spoken in the past few minutes, Dejah Thoris turned her eyes to the side of the cell where Phaidor sat and found the murderous creature asleep. Had the hour grown late enough to extract the energies of the temple’s prisoners?  


“Phaidor is troublesome, but I can subdue her,” Thuvia continued. “And I did tell you about the strange adventures that led me to the belly of the flyer where we were detained prior to now, but I neglected to reveal the full story of my life as it was before those events.”  


Dejah Thoris raised herself to as full a height as she could while sitting in chains. “Speak to me of this life, Thuvia, for we have naught else to do, and there is naught else I would rather do than hear of your past experiences.”  


Thuvia cleared her throat. “If you wish to learn all that happened to me between my childhood and our first meeting, you must be prepared for details of the most unspeakable sort.”  


“I doubt they can be significantly more unsavory than all that I have witnessedor experienced.”  


“Awful surprises may be in store for you, Princess. I can only warn you.”  


“I will listen to anything you say.”  


“Very well.” She swallowed before beginning her tale.  


“As I said, I have been a captive before we came in sight of each other. For fifteen years, I was a wretched slave of the therns in the Valley Dor.”  


“Before now, if you had told me that the therns were a band of ignoble scoundrels of the worst type, then I would not have believed you, but these latest days have shown me otherwise. What, exactly, did they do to you, and how came you to be their captive?”  


Thuvia sighed. “I was abducted by a gang of therns when I left my palace courtyard with a retainer in tow. One would expect that a princess would have the most stalwart, attentive, and competent guards, but here we rot in this prison.”  


Dejah Thoris permitted herself a brief, bitter smile at that. Whatever possessed villains to kidnap princesses too often overpowered the good will and fighting prowess of the best bodyguards.  


“What happened then I can hardly bear to recount. I had the duties required of an imperious woman’s slave, and I was still pressed into the uses of….” She lapsed into silence.  


“Now, Thuvia, should the details of your slavery be too extreme to warrant retelling, I will not bid you speak of them.”  


“No, Princess, they must be told. I was merely searching for the best possible phrasing.”  


The day--or perhaps it was the night--wore on, and Thuvia told Dejah Thoris of the iniquities heaped upon her as a slave of the therns. When Thuvia’s tale finally wound down, the Princess of Helium blinked several times. Once again, she felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. Rather than attempting to stop them, she allowed them to flow, taking little heed that they fell on her neck.  


“Would that I could slay the men who abused you so horribly,” she said when she regained the power to utter speech.  


“I have avenged myself already, but your sympathy is noted, my friend.” Thuvia sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly.  


Silence reigned over the next few minutes. Dejah Thoris turned her gaze away from the other red woman and saw that Phaidor still slept. A small measure of relief filling her, she looked again at Thuvia.  


“Princess, I must make a request,” said the younger woman.  


“You need but ask.”  


“I wish to tell you stories—of my life and of the lives of others, including those who never existed save in the minds of those who did—but please, never ask me about my captivity again. I wish to put it from my mind. You now know all I am willing to tell anyone of it, which is thrice as much as I would tell someone other than you. And I wish to hear whatever stories you may have to tell. I will listen to your word as a banth listens to mine.”  


Dejah Thoris raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean to tell me that the banths attend to you when you speak to them?”  


Thuvia’s voice rose an octave. “Oh, indeed! Why, they are mine to command. Did I tell you that story?”  


And so Thuvia regaled her fellow prisoner with the true story of her unusual psychic abilities, to which Dejah Thoris replied with the tale of her first triumph in the palace laboratory, which Thuvia matched with a fictitious account of a green woman who fell in love with a red man and braved exile for the sake of love; and for the span of time that saw the princesses imprisoned, they felt the forging of a bond that freed rather than tied.


End file.
